Fahrenheit 451 Quotes with Page Numbers

It was a pleasure to burn. (Page 1)

With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. (Page 1)

We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real? (Page 55)

We should all be equal in our insignificance, for another reason; perhaps then we would see the significance of others. (Page 102)

A book is a loaded gun in the house next door…Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? (Page 22)

He was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as the true state of affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask (Page 69)

It’s not books you need, it’s some of the things that once were in books…They’re all, all my family… I’ve got you to stand outside the fire (Page 99)

Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features (Page 83)

I don’t talk things, sir. I talk the meaning of things. (Page 75)

The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They’re Caesar’s praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, ‘Remember, Caesar, thou art mortal.’ Most of us can’t rush around, talking to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven’t time, money or that many friends. The things you’re looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book (Page 127)

There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us (Page 83)

Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. (Page 82)

Even now, don’t you see them limping along with the lopped-off lovers’ heads under their arms? (Page 36)

Nobody listens any more. I can’t talk to the walls because they’re yelling at me. I can’t talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense. (Page 48)

Reading words on paper, black words on white paper, was a impossibility. It was dying, going in the grave, that wild, kindled being. (Page 107)

What is there about fire that’s so lovely? No matter what age we are, what draws us to it? (Page 108)

Colored people don’t like Little Black Sambo. Burn it. White people don’t feel good about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Burn it. Someone’s written a book on tobacco and cancer of the lungs? The cigarette people are weeping? Bum the book. (Page 54)

That was only a dim whisper now, when he raised the empty needle or the loaded needle. The room was indeed empty. Every hour so many damn things in the sky! How in hell did those bombers get up there every single second of our lives! Why doesn’t someone want to talk about it! We started and won two atomic wars since 1990! Is it because we’re having so much fun at home we’ve forgotten the world? Is it because we’re so rich and the rest of the world’s so poor and we just don’t care if they are? I’ve heard rumors; the world is starving, but we’re well fed. The world’s poor are fat too-most of them can’t move sixty miles a day, running away from bombs, but they’re still fat. And so: (Page 119)

Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. (Page 83)

So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. (Page 83)

He was three hundred yards downstream when the city hit the bomb. (Page 158)

I’m seventeen and I’m crazy. My uncle says the two always go together. When people ask your age, he said, always say seventeen and insane. (Page 15)

I was out of my mind, anybody would be, except those we caught of course, and saved, of course (Page 15)

Why is it,’ he said, one time, at the subway entrance, ‘I feel I’ve known you so many years?’ ‘Because I like you,’ she said, ‘and I don’t want anything from you. (Page 55)

That’s sad. Go home now and think of your first husband divorced and your second husband killed in a jet and your third husband blowing his brains out, go home now and think of the dozen abortions you’ve had, go home now and think of that and your damn Caesarean sections, too, and your children who hate your guts! Go home!’ Montag shook his head. ‘I’m not going back. (Page 99)

We’re going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we’re doing, you can say, We’re remembering. That’s where we’ll win out in the long run. And someday we’ll remember so much that we’ll build the biggest goddamn steam-shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. (Page 166)

But, remember, firemen are rarely necessary. The public itself stopped reading of its own accord. (Page 24)

There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing. (Page 48)

He felt his smile slide away, melt, fold over and down on itself like a tallow skin, like the stuff of a fantastic candle burning too long and now collapsing and now blown out. (Page 3)

It’s what I’ve tried to tell kids at school, little savages, about time. If you don’t want a man unhappy politically, don’t give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the government is inefficient, topheavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it (Page 58)

My ‘family’ is people. They tell me things; I laugh, they laugh! And the colors! (Page 67)

There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing. (Page 48)

It’s about structure. Above all, entertainment. It’s about structure. (Page 79)

Nobody listens anymore. I can’t talk to the walls because they’re yelling at me. I can’t talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it’ll make sense. (Page 58)

We’re going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we’re doing, you can say, We’re remembering. That’s where we’ll win out in the long run. And someday we’ll remember so much that we’ll build the biggest goddamn steam-shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. (Page 166)

We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over. (Page 26)

Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away. (Page 158)

Let someone else be damned. (Page 176)

The sun burnt every day. It burnt Time. (Page 58)

What traitors books can be! You think they’re backing you up, and they turn on you. Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives. (Page 150)

A book is a loaded gun in the house next door…Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man? (Page 21)

Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them, at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us (Page 79)

We never burned right… (Page 83)

The flowers of all the tomorrows are in the seeds of today. (Page 158)

The woman looked about, glanced quickly at Montag, and seized a book. She showed it into the kitchen and bumped the door shut and stood holding the book against her trembling fingers (Page 45)

The sun burnt every day. It burnt Time. (Page 58)

Stuff your eyes with wonder, live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories (Page 83)

Well, didn’t you know, old boy? That’s war. Now stay in your own corner. We will forget. We will let you forget. (Page 96)

I don’t want to change sides and just be told what to do. There’s no reason to change if I do that. (Page 93)

I remember the newspapers dying like huge moths. No one wanted them back. No one missed them (Page 77)